Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries: Exemplary Contributions to the Classroom and the Boardroom

Manfred Kets de Vries has spent over 25 years of his professional life at INSEAD, he started teaching there in 1971, leaving in 1973, and returning in 1984. He is now a Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change;. He was also the Founder of the INSEAD Global Leadership Centre in 2003. Manfred is a tenured professor in the Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise area.

Kets de Vries received a master's degree in Economics in 1966) from the University of Amsterdam; an International Teachers Program certificate in 1967, his M.B.A. in 1968, and his D.B.A. in 1970 from Harvard Business School. He also received training from the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, where he is member since 1982. He is also a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association and a corresponding member of Paris Psychoanalytical Society.

Kets de Vries had held professorships at McGill University, the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, Montreal, and Harvard Business School, and has lectured at management institutions around the world. He is a founding member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations.

In 2005, as the first non-American, he has received the International Leadership Award for "his contributions to the classroom and the board room".[3] In 2008, he has also been given the Lifetime Achievement Award (the Leadership Legacy Project of the International Leadership Association), being viewed as one of the world’s six founding professionals in the development of leadership as a field and discipline. In 2009, he was rated amongst the Top 50 Thinkers in Management

Manfred Kets de Vries is the program director and scientific director respectively of the following INSEAD top management seminars

While teaching, he won INSEAD’s Distinguished Teacher Award five times. Manfred spends as much of his time as he can spare writing books, book chapters, case, working papers, articles, blogs and developmental tools. He is constantly sought after for interview by the press

One of his recent projects was the INSEAD Global Leadership Centre (IGLC) where he explored the sphere of the personal and interpersonal aspects of leadership by using the clinical paradigm. Through research, coaching and assessment tools, the IGLC developed better understanding of the psychological forces behind effective leaders and healthy organizations. In a time of downsizing, outsourcing, rationalizing, and e-working, an understanding of individual psychology is more relevant than ever before. It empowers individuals to leverage skills, vision and entrepreneurial acumen in order to create results-driven, sustainable organizations by putting people first.